PAIN
What is pain?
In medicine pain relates to a sensation that hurts. If you feel pain it hurts, you feel discomfort, distress and perhaps agony, depending on the severity of it. Pain can be steady and constant, in which case it may be an ache. It might be a throbbing pain - a pulsating pain. The pain could have a pinching sensation, or a stabbing one.
The English word 'pain' probably comes from Old French (peine), Latin (poena - meaning punishment pain), or Ancient Greek (poine - a word more related to penalty), or a combination of all three.
Only the person who is experiencing the pain can describe it properly. Pain is a very individual experience.
The NIH (National Institutes of Health) National Pain Consortium estimates that the public health burden of pain affects one third of America's population at a cost of between $560 billion and $635 billion each year.
The British Pain Society quoted England's Chief Medical Officer, who said that annually more than five million people in the UK develop chronic pain. Unfortunately, one third of them do not recover. 11% of adults and 8% of children in the UK suffer severe pain.